We published our report on how Video Gamers behave when they interact with Social Media Platforms. Spoiler alert: Video Gamers are very engaged with widgets and applications! Download Lotame ID report (In PDF)
January 19, 2009
January 16, 2009
Social Media Marketing is like Planting a Garden
In order to take advantage of Social Media Marketing you need to think about it like plant a garden.
In its most simple of terms Social Media is one really big conversation. People are talking about every single topic under the sun. Every single person that participates in the conversation influences the others. In the physical world, there are natural boundaries to these conversations, geography, size of the table, etc. In the digital world these limitations are largely not applicable; the barriers to participate in these ongoing conversations are very low. Anyone with an interest can participate by simply reading, listening, or watching the related posts, blogs, comments etc. Individual opinions are easily expressed by adding something to the dialog, from writing a blog entry or posting a video, to simply rating a post or commenting on a blog.
Find the right Soil, the Super Influencers: Not all the influencers are created equal, some people are more active in the conversation than others, exposing their opinions more frequently with greater velocity, these are the super influencers. Without the limitations of the physical world, these Super Influencers have the ability to sway opinion across large swaths of the digital population.Thes people are defined by the sheer quantity of content they produce; ratings, uploaded photos, videos, blog post, comments, etc.
Pick good gardening equipment, Harness the Power through technology: Here in lies the true beauty of Social Media marketing, a smart marketer can easily and efficiently add their own perspective to the conversation. By using smart technology to deliver a message to those people who are influencing the dialog, a marketer can participate in the conversation.
Planting the Seeds, deliver the message: By injecting the marketing messages into the dialog and by targeting the right people (those that contribute the most content to the conversation) a smart marketer can effectively magnify their own influence over the conversation. For example if a coffee house is introducing a new organic blend to their product offering, they may want to offer information about the blend, where it was grown, what went into the growing process, any special packaging, etc to the influencers of the conversation.
It can be that easy. Use technology to find and isolate the influencers. Use that same technology to deliver targeted messages that plant the seed. You will watch your social marketing efforts blossom!
January 15, 2009
Episode 2 of the Social Media Remix
It is with great pleasure that I now share with you our PodCast/Radio Show, Episode 2 of Social Media Remix.
The Social media Funky bunch is back with a vengeance in 2009. Join myself, Andy, Alex, and Dan as we expose the secrets and share the truth about Social media.
Join us for 30 minutes as we focus on three topics, Burger King's highly successful and viral campaign "whopper sacrifice," Fred Wilson's 2009 Prediction about Display Advertising becoming more efficient than Search, and the Disinter mediation of Ad Agencies, Clients, and Media outlets
January 09, 2009
December 30, 2008
Lotame makes Brands look Beautiful
Lotame's Crowd Control has been doing wonders for our Health and Beauty clients. Our targeting and time spent technologies working together with a dynamic campaign and awesome creative drove heightened awareness, attention, and engagement. We just completed an ad campaign that highlights some of the important metrics that Lotame can drive for Health and Beauty related advertisers.
- Created a 33% increase in Ad Response Rates.
- Reached new influencers.
- Drove Awareness.
December 29, 2008
Three Great Social Media Studies
There are three research reports that I would like to point out as the most meaningful to me in 2009. One is actually from the late part of 2006 but it is very applicable to my thinking.
The first report is called “Feed – Consumer Experience Report” from the bleeding edge digital agency Avenue A/Razorfish (The agency quietly dropped the Avenue A from their name last month). The report is a comprehensive which is available for download here (warning: Big File). It is a compilation of smaller reports. Some of the best findings in the report were:
- The massive amount of time users of Social media consume “the majority of respondents (75%) indicate they spend at least one hour a week on the properties, with a large number (19%) spending more than SEVEN hours a week on social networking sites
- Consumers increasingly using Social Media to make buying decision “4 out of 10 consumers have made purchase decisions based on advertising they saw on a social media site, and 76% welcome advertising on social media”
The second report is from the Universal McCann group and entitled “When did we start trusting strangers” It is a 35 page PDF report Download Strangers (warning: Big File). It was written by Tom Smith who is the Head of Consumer Future. The report interviewed 17,000 people in 29 countries, and some of the most interesting findings for me are:
- Anyone can influence anyone: “We now trust strangers as much as our closest friends.”
- Friendship is no longer local or face to face: “It’s becoming distant and virtualised.”
- Everybody is an influencer: The power to influence no longer belongs to the experts or “those in the know”. The idea that we live in a simplistic world where there is a small group of “influencers” who dictate the agenda to everyone else is no longer true thanks to social media and digital technology. We all share influence today whether we actively mean to or not.
- New super influencers rise above the mass: Not all consumer influencers are equal. A new breed of “super influencers” has been created by the tools of the social media revolution.
The final report was actually created in 2006 by the ad agency OMD in conjunction with Yahoo. and it examines the youth culture online, and how they can become passionate about certain brands. The reason that I included this report, entitled “truly, madly, deeply engaged” is it provides a timeline for how consumers can become the heralds of a brand in social media context. The report is available for downloading here: Download Truly, Madly, Deeply, Engaged (184.4K)
Some of the great data in this report includes:
- Three aspects that are driving the Socialization of the web are, Community, Self-Expression, and Personalization
- The My Media Generation is quick to adapt to new online tools as they become available, Instant Messenger, Blogging, etc. (My Media Generation is the name that the report gives to the youth culture)
- The My Media Generation considers the Internet an Essential part of their lives
There are more good reports that came out last year, but these were the highlights for me, as they begin to tell the story of just how different Marketing can be in the very near future...the future of 2009!
Have a great new year. See ya in 2009!
December 24, 2008
December 23, 2008
Lotame is a respected Social Media Leader
Lotame is currently the number #4 best producers of short* content in 2008 according to you! as voted on the Shorty Awards in the social media criteria. We are listed right before the awesome Chris Brogan, man for whom I have a ton of respect and love for! Thanks everyone for your vote. The deadline for voting is midnight on Dec 31st. You can add your voice here
Check out this screen shot that I just grabbed...it may be the last time we are in the 4th position!
Moving at the Speed of the Internet
As many of you may have guessed at Lotame we get things done quickly, or as we call it, “moving at the speed of the internet.” We build our technology quickly, we produce results for our publishers and advertisers quickly, we produce custom reporting and inform our clients of significant learnings quickly. This culture of quick includes our Marketing efforts. Here are just a few of the things that we have accomplished in a very short time:
- Many of you have been following Lotame (It's actually me) on Twitter, if not you can find us here is the link to our identity @lotame…this effort was started 45 days ago. I regularly provide the community with feedback and guidance on Social Media Marketing. For example, last week I attended the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) conference call on Behavioral Targeting practices, and tweeted important highlights of the presentations. I was even able to ask the panel a question or two that people had tweeted to me (Thanks @fleckman and @jameseliason) @Lotame has already been nominated for a Shorty Award, if you are enjoying my tweets please make your vote count here.
- We launched Lotame’s blog Lotamelearnings about 3 months ago and our readership has sky rocketed. We launched our ID reports, data that we have readily available that profiles Social Media usage habits of unique segments of our society. We have already profiled Teens, Moms, and TV Watchers! Almost 1,500 people have signed up to get these reports that we release on a monthly basis. We started the program less than 3 months ago!
- And just last we week we launched "Social Media Remix" the radio show. It is our latest marketing installment.
I want to thank everyone who are participating in our ongoing interactive dialogs, no matter what the forum; twitter, the blog, the reports, and now the Radio show…I can only hope that you are learning as much from me as I am learning from you! And my pledge to you is that we will keep moving at the speed of the internet!
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